


Shoots and Seeds

by consulting_vulcan_jedi_detective



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Dark, Fantasy, Gen, Ivan's a wizard, Magic, POV Feliks, POV First Person, The Wood - Uprooted, Wizards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-27 14:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6288037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consulting_vulcan_jedi_detective/pseuds/consulting_vulcan_jedi_detective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the valley at the border, where I lived, there was a tower. The tower was home to the Wolf, the often-terrible immortal wizard whose duty was to protect us from the more terrible Wood. The Wood was alive with a sentience that wanted to devour the kingdom. The Wolf only wanted one youth every ten years to serve him, and he was not altogether a bad lord. But while the Wolf was still something like a man, and never demanded much of us, the Wood was not a man. The Wood was endlessly hungry and spiteful, and despite the efforts of our wizard, it pushed a little further every year.</p><p>When I was seventeen, the year the Wolf chose me, the Wood grew bolder than ever before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Opady Śniegu (Snowfall)

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfic is actually just an excuse for me to do something in the _Uprooted_ universe and write some totally out of character _Hetalia_ characters. Knowledge of either fandom is not actually necessary in reading this fic, but if you're an _Uprooted_ person, you might want to read the following note regarding setting:
> 
> The setting is only roughly the same as in _Uprooted_ ; the primary countries are still Polnya and Rosya, but most of the towns carry different names, and the valley is not necessarily the same valley; however, the Wood it borders is essentially the same Wood, though its origins have been altered. Most of the history described in _Uprooted_ has also been disregarded.

I was, as far as I knew, the only one who noticed the Wolf’s arrival. I was with the women, laying the feasting tables for the arrival of our lord, the great and terrible wizard who lived in the tower at the northmost end of the valley, and I happened to glance up when _he_ came. Not from the road by coach, as any of the neighboring lords might have done in their lands, but the other lords weren’t wizards, and our Wolf was.

The snows had come late this year, but it was midwinter now and the ground was heavily blanketed despite the efforts of our fathers to clear the streets. There were drifts heaped against the walls of the shop buildings from the last night’s snow. But now there was something in the snow that had stuck to the side of the tailor Kaczynski’s shop, first the faint outline of a face and then, abruptly there was a man stepping into the street, a man who didn’t bother to brush off the snow that covered him, which faded away, or, perhaps, became part of him.

He didn’t look particularly wizardly or even lordly. He was underdressed for the weather, though he didn’t seem to mind the cold. What he _was_ wearing was plain though well made, hardly slovenly, but certainly not grand, either. From his dress, he could have been a mildly affluent visitor from another town in the valley. But there were other things, little things beyond his method of transport, which gave him away, and primary among these things were his eyes. They keenly caught my own staring ones within seconds of his arrival. Even from across the street, I thought I could see the shadows of dark shapes prowling behind his clear violet eyes, shapes with bright pointed teeth and bristling edges.

But then the thought was gone, perhaps only illusion, and I realized that I was staring openly at my lord, my jaw slowly dropping, neglected.

I expected anger, possibly. Or, no. I couldn’t say what I expected. The last time the Wolf had come into the valley on Koleda had been ten years ago, and then not even in Łek, but in Stawiski, the northernmost of the valley’s towns. I’d been seven at the time. I’d never seen our liege lord myself. I only knew of his deeds, and while mostly they were called necessary, they did not inspire comfort in any degree. How he might respond to my disrespect, I didn’t know.

He blinked at me emptily, once, and now his eyes betrayed nothing. And then he turned away and walked away toward our headwoman, Emilia, and I could see that he wasn’t even wearing boots.

Emilia hadn’t been headwoman the last time the Wolf had visited Łek, and she moved through the formalities just a hair too quickly. Though she tried her best to conceal it, I observed nervous agitation in her gestures of obeisance.

There was nothing for her to worry about. The wizard, sitting disinterestedly aside, had long since cast his gaze from Emilia and was gazing down, where he was rolling something between his palms. When the headwoman’s welcome concluded, the Wolf stood slowly, leisurely, and walked to where I and thirty-two others were standing.

Only on rare occasions did the Wolf leave his tower, at least that we in the valley knew of. The first reason for him to come down was ordinary disaster: a particularly powerful strzyga eating townspeople, a spate of drownings of grown men owed to rusalka attacks. A messenger would go out or a beacon would light, the seldom-used doors of his tower would swing open, and our lord would ride like a cold wind to bring magical aid to whichever town was threatened. 

The second reason he might come was the Wood, the malevolent forest that formed the border between Polnya and the neighboring state of Rosya. The Wood was our enemy, more so than even the Rosyans, and on their side of the Wood they did the same as we did, which was to do everything possible to keep it from making incursions into the human-inhabited land. The Wolf was our guard. He’d been in his tower, holding the Wood back on this side, for over a hundred years, maybe two, and before him, if there had been a Wood then, there must have been another wizard or witch with the same task, for the Wood, if it could, would spread across the entire valley. It would take all of Polnya, it would take Rosya, it would devour the people of the world if it was allowed, and it would begin with my valley. With the Wolf in his tower near the edge of the Wood, we were safe, or at least safe enough to think it sane to live in here.

In exchange for the defenses of the Wolf, we the people of the valley owed him tribute: the ordinary annual levy of goods and food, due to him as our lord, and a second thing, which was payment for his services as wizard and protector. This was the third reason he came to the valley, to the towns, and to some of us, it was no less terrible a reason than the first two.

Every ten years, all of the valley’s youths of the age of seventeen gathered in one town, usually not the same from one year to the next, and waited for the Wolf to come and make his choice. One servant, every ten years, he chose from the small pool of us who were the right age, for him to take to his tower and for us in the valley to never see again. It could be any of us. He had no particular criteria, at least not that we could discern. Gender, appearance, talent—there was no pattern. The last one he’d taken was a young woman, dark-haired and clever with her hands, so they said. She’d been from some other town, and nobody in Łek knew her.

But this tenth-year Koleda was being held in Łek, and the fear that it could be one of our own taken was at the fore, for every parent of a Wolf-born child.

We stood in a straight line, shoulders brushing gently. The Wolf came close. He walked from one end of the row to the other, unhurried, and when he looked into our faces it was with detachment.

I studied him as he neared. Even barefoot, he was taller than most of the men of our town. His hair was very pale wheat, nearing ash-grey in color but not in the way our elders’ hair did. His face might have been called soft if his expression hadn’t been so cold and remote, and though his build was solid there was a hungry feel in his step.

He looked like a man, though his age couldn’t possibly be discerned by his appearance. But he did not move like a man, and his eyes were absent of humanity. He was the Wolf, and we knew it as well as any flock of sheep might.

When he reached me, approximately halfway down the line, he looked into my eyes the same as he’d done with the others before me. I looked back. This time, close up, I saw past those deceptively clear eyes. I saw, barely suppressed, the flash of brilliant teeth and spilled blood. Fear or surprise must have shown on my face, and I thought I even jerked away, humiliatingly, but the Wolf had already broken eye contact and continued to walk along the line at the same pace as before, showing no change in emotion whatsoever.

He reached the end of the line, but I already knew before he spoke. His eyes met mine once more. “You. What is your name?” His language was crisp, his voice incongruously light when coming from lips that could have been carved from ice.

“Feliks Łukasiewicz, my lord,” I said numbly, but at least I didn’t stumble over the words.

The Wolf nodded. “You’ll do,” he said, and that was all, before he turned around himself and was gone, leaving only loose snow blowing gently to the ground.


	2. Pierwsze Drogi (First Roads)

I was allowed until tomorrow’s sunset to make a clean break of my ties with the town and deliver myself to the tower. Traditionally, the Wolf-chosen here in the northern half of the valley spent the end of the first day making rounds of the town.

I’d planned to do the same, but I ended up sitting on my bed, holding my sister Oliwia as she poured heavy warm tears into my shirt and clung to me like we were one.

“I’ll write you letters,” I promised. “I’ll send you stones, huge Rosyan emeralds and red amethysts,” I teased. Ola pulled her face from my chest and cracked a weak smile. “I’ll seduce him and have him grow flowers like they only have in the Far East, and I’ll send them to you and they’ll never die.” My sister struggled with her face. “I’ll steal books from him for you, books larger than your head, and you’ll learn how to do magic and speak to the Wood. You’ll be so fearsome that it backs off and we won’t need a wizard for a hundred years.”

Now Oliwia sat up and swatted me on the head. “Better me than you. If you could talk to the Wood, you’d infuriate it so much it would spoil the crops or turn them all into mushrooms.”

I scratched my head. “True,” I admitted. “But maybe I’ll irritate him so much he’ll send me back.” I didn’t need to say who _he_ was. Oliwia didn’t answer, instead snuggling back into my shirt.

Oliwia and I were born thirty minutes apart. We weren’t identical—our sexes were opposite, for one thing—but our faces were similar, and since I’d started growing my hair long a few years back we could be surprisingly difficult to differentiate, or so I was told.

“I’ll sleep in your bed every other day,” she said, muffled.

“I’ll send bats to spell messages in the sky.”

“I’ll make trips to the tower and throw rocks at your window and ask you to let your hair down.”

And that was how we spent the end of the first day, as well as a good part of the night. We didn’t talk about how none of the Wolf’s choices had ever returned to the valley, and while we’d heard that they sometimes would send letters initially, the frequency of those letters always trickled off eventually until there was no more communication between those taken and their families.

There was also a question that neither of us voiced: Why me, and not her? What had the Wolf been looking for that he had chosen one twin over the other? It couldn’t be gender alone. I didn’t tell Oliwia that I’d seen the Wolf, and he’d seen me, before the selection. Surely that couldn’t have been the deciding factor. It couldn’t have been that I’d been swindled by chance alone.

The second day, I woke with my arms entwined with Ola’s, who was still sleeping peacefully. There was sun streaming gaily in through the window, and the sounds of an ordinary day in the town drizzled in, telling of the lives of my townspeople, unseen for now.

Movement in the doorway of our bedroom startled me momentarily before I realized it was our mother, watching Ola and I in our sleep.

She moved toward me as I untangled myself. Oliwia shifted but didn’t awaken yet.

“The sun’s been up for nearly two hours,” my mother told me, sitting down on the mattress gently. I could hear the silent reproach, the one she was too kind to voice. _You have only a few hours left with us, and you sleep the time away?_ She smiled her softest smile, but I could see sadness and solemnity in her eyes. She’d already resigned herself to the fact of my departure. I couldn’t fault her for it.

She left shortly after, when Oliwia woke. We dressed for the day in silence, she more hastily than I.

As I started to shrug on my better sukmana, Ola stopped me. “Wear this one,” she said, tugging my other one from the chest under my bed.

I looked down at our mother’s embroidery patterning the edges of the coat I was wearing, and then at the thicker, coarser garment Ola was holding. “That will hardly impress him,” I said.

“You’re not trying to impress him,” Ola scolded. “This one’s warmer.” This was true, but I couldn’t imagine that his tower would be a too uncomfortable temperature. Then again, if his trick of turning into a pile of snow happened to be a habit, it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

Who was I trying to deceive? There was no way to be _prepared_ for being chosen by the Wolf.

I didn’t think, judging from his attire yesterday, that he would care too much about how I was dressed. All the same, I preferred nicer clothes myself, and surely he wouldn’t let me freeze to death under his watch. In the end, I wore the sukmana I was already wearing, and packed the thicker one in the trunk I would be taking with me.

With Oliwia’s help, I packed everything I wanted in little time. I could tell she hated to speed my departure from the house, but every minute saved now was a minute I could spend making important goodbyes, and she knew that as well as I did.

For my last precious hours, I was followed around the town by the eyes of my townspeople. The eyes of my friends and close relatives described emotion ranging from agony to quiet acceptance. Worse were the eyes of the people I saw on a daily basis, but who weren’t particularly close to me or my family, who had no connection to me personally any further than the simple bond that linked fellow townspeople. _Their_ eyes said, _Thank goodness it wasn’t my Zofia chosen_ , or they comforted themselves, thinking that if Łek had to lose a son, it at least wasn’t their Jacek or Anatol.

It could have been more bearable if it those eyes had belonged to people from Stawiski or even our neighbor town Reszel, but the visiting families had left hastily, taking to the road to return to their own villages almost as soon as the Koleda meal had finished. These people on the streets today were all my neighbors.

What was left of the visitors were the goods they’d brought as their respective towns’ portion of the tribute to the Wolf, which would be delivered at the same time as me.

We—I and the drivers of the wagons that would bring the tribute to the tower—had to set out a little after noon. The sun set indecently early, this time of year, and it took over two hours to travel the road from Łek to the edge of the Wood. The weight of the tribute would just about counter the speed we would gain travelling this time of year, atop a road ice-hardened to the solidity of stone.

I didn’t try to lie to myself. This was the last time I’d ever see Łek again, at least from its own streets, so I was selfish about my departure. It might have been kinder to spare my family the sight of my tears. It might have been kinder not to touch them, not to try to absorb all the warmth I could from my mother’s and father’s arms, not to hold Ola like I was trying to imprint myself into her frame. But I didn’t regret doing these things, and I didn’t think my family would mind having a couple more memories of me before I went.

“Love you, brother,” Oliwia said as the first cart started out, clasping my hand.

“Love you, Ola.”

I kept my feet on the ground until the final wagon began to move, the driver shooting me a sympathetic but urging look. Then I pulled myself onto the back of the cart, and watched my sister and my parents until we were too far along the straight road for me to see anything but the vague collection of buildings that had been my home for seventeen years.

 

I was sore from sitting on the wooden planks of the cart when we arrived at the tower. We hadn’t stopped since leaving Łek; nobody wanted to be late delivering the tribute to our lord. Eager to ease my complaining bottom, I hopped from the cart and got my first good look at my new home.

I’d never seen the tower up close. It wasn’t quite as close to the Wood as it appeared from home, but it was still awfully close, and that troubled me. It seemed almost foolish to let a powerful wizard live so near to an entity that would have liked nothing more than to add his power to its own, but perhaps the King and the Wolf had their reasons. Perhaps the Wolf’s presence was a magical deterrent in itself.

The tower itself _was_ as tall as it looked from afar. Large blocks hewn from some bright white-grey stone spiraled uniformly upward, making up the majority of the tower’s construction, interrupted by the frames of windows set at regular intervals.

The structure didn’t remain a uniform width along its height. The lowest level was the widest, probably so it could host the great hall required of a lord’s house, and as the tower rose starkly into the sky it tapered off along a gentle curve until it reached a point, like a single massive thorn growing out of the land.

Some distance behind the tower, the Wood loomed hungrily. Even from this distance, I thought I could see its eagerness to leap across the thankfully vast expanse of dead ground, maybe a mile in width, deliberately separating it and the tower.

That mile would be the only thing protecting me from that thick, spiky darkness. That mile, and, I supposed, the Wolf. Still, the physical proximity of the Wood was uncomfortable.

My racing thoughts were voiced by Hugo, the cartwright, the man who’d driven the last cart. “Who’d willingly live so close to the Wood?” he asked, crossing his arms nervously and shivering slightly. He then reddened when he remembered that I was standing near. 

Nobody answered. Breath blossomed in misty clouds in front of our faces. I glanced toward the mountains to the west, where the sun was just skimming the peaks, ready to sink for the night, and then I looked around at our surroundings. There was no obvious place to put the tribute, and I also had no idea what I was supposed to do. The Wolf had given no instructions, and I hadn’t thought to ask anyone if they knew what the past chosen young men and women had done upon arrival. Hugo didn’t know, either, when I asked.

“You can leave them here,” _his_ voice came from behind us. We all flinched before turning around and bowing our heads. He was standing several feet from us, very still, when we lifted our faces.

Today he was wearing an unadorned, beige-colored kosovorotka in the style of the Rosyan peasantry. He was carrying a large brown bag slung over his shoulder, and he still wasn’t wearing shoes, but he _was_ a wizard and I supposed he could do whatever he liked.

“Feliks Łukasiewicz,” he said, rolling my name in his mouth like he was tasting it. “Of Łek, yes?”

I nodded mutely, daring a look into his eyes once more. Today there was something cleaner about his expression, something that said _simple_ , that said _plain_. This wasn’t the Wolf we’d seen yesterday, and even his walk as he moved forward to greet us, welcoming smile in place, was casual and unassuming, unthreatening. His manner seemed to set the men who’d driven the carts at ease, and it was an unexpected reminder that he couldn’t have been much older than I was today when he’d stopped aging. But I was looking at his eyes, and I found what I sought: that same undercurrent of impatient darkness I’d seen in Łek. It wasn’t malevolence, but more something akin to hunger, or constant discontent, even.

The Wolf helped the drivers and I unload the contents of the carts onto the ground near the tower. He didn’t use magic, just carried one crate at a time, and his arms were straining as much as ours were. By the time we’d finished emptying the carts, the last of the sun’s rays were just pulling themselves behind the fringes of the darkened mountains.

The drivers, sitting once again atop the now lightened carts, bade a reasonably cheerful farewell to the Wolf. Hugo’s final look at me over his shoulder, melancholy, was the only farewell I received.

And then they were too far away to be seen, disappearing into the darkening twilight of the road. Too far away certainly to see the Wolf’s expression slacken and smooth out into detachment. He closed his eyes and breathed several deep breaths, as if to relieve a strain, before turning to the main entrance of the tower. I briefly wondered if the valley’s tribute was going to remain outside in the winter night, but trailed after the wizard after he shot a glance over his shoulder.

The doors were built from the same stone as the rest of the tower, but each was made of only a single enormous slab, carved with a simple design of curved lines running roughly vertically in pairs. At the top of the doors, the lines curled and went in all directions, some converging and diverging to create a tangled canopy, and as the Wolf brushed his fingertips across the surface, I realized what the design was intended to represent: trees.

The heavy doors swung open under his touch, and I followed him into the tower, wondering if he’d built the tower, or if it had belonged to someone else before him.

The great hall, just inside the doors, was darkened, but as the Wolf walked down the length of the enormous room, lights popped to life, set high in the walls. I examined one curiously as we passed. These weren’t ordinary lamps. There _was_ a kind of fire lighting them, but the flames were too white and steady, undisturbed by the movement of air, and they were surrounded with the faintest haze, a purplish fog that was barely perceptible.

The occasional small dint in the stone floor suggested that there might sometimes be a feasting table in here, but today the hall was almost completely empty. Near the wall furthest from the door was the dais, raised a begrudging few inches from the main floor, and the lord’s chair, both carved of the pale stone of the tower.

“I don’t use this hall very often,” the Wolf, several paces ahead of me, suddenly said, adjusting his direction so he was headed for an opening in the side wall draped with heavy fabric. “Chances are, you won’t either.”

We ascended a staircase and stopped briefly on each higher level, the Wolf briefly describing certain rooms: The kitchen, which contained a hearth but no chimney, though, he told me, would function normally. The library, which I was assured was extensive. The various storage rooms, most of which I was welcome to take whatever from. The _other_ storage rooms, and his workroom, where I would be advised to look but not touch.

We emerged on some higher level where the floors were carpeted and the ceilings comfortably low. The Wolf set off down the corridor without a word. The way spiraled on a gentle slope upward. Doors were set in the left-hand side, on the inside of the curve, at long, even intervals.

I estimated we’d risen the height of another three or four floors when the hallway came to an end at a final door, which the Wolf opened. “You may choose any of the rooms we passed on this hall,” he told me, finally turning to look at me. He examined me with piercing eyes, and I suddenly felt terribly exposed. “Familiarize yourself with the tower, if you like. I’ll be here in my quarters if you have questions or need anything, but you will be free to do with your time what you like.” He entered the room, approaching a large desk, apparently having said everything he was going to say.

But those last words, more than anything, bewildered me. I’d always assumed that the young men and women chosen by the Wolf were chosen as servants. After all, most lords had dozens to maintain their households, and the Wolf never appeared to take anyone into his tower except for once every ten years. “You…don’t want me to cook for you, and things like that?” I asked in confusion. “My lord,” I added hastily after an improperly long pause.

He paused at the desk and turned back to me, eyes narrowed. “ _Do_ you know how to cook?” he asked.

“Not very well, my lord,” I confessed.

“If you must use a term of address, ‘sir’ will do,” he said, evidently no fonder of the formality than I was. “You will not be required to cook. If you need anything, I will obtain it for you. If you wish to make your own meals, the kitchen and storerooms contain ingredients. I take care of my own meals.” Though his tone was only conversational, his last sentence evoked the unsettling image of the Wolf stalking prey through a darkened town. Still, as far as I knew, he only ate ordinary food.

“If I’m not supposed to serve you then, sir, what is my purpose?” I asked.

He blinked, going still, and I fidgeted under his stare. “Occasional human company, I suppose.” He looked down at the desk.

I was left standing awkwardly, just outside the doorway. “That’s all?” I blurted out. I was bewildered, but my tone came out nearly indignant.

He glanced back up sharply, and I managed not to flinch back. Back again was that intent hunter’s expression, but this time mixed bizarrely with curiosity. “Yes,” he said. It sounded more like a question than a certainty. “Is that so surprising?” It was, and even the force of his eyes wasn’t enough to hide the fact that he was concealing something.

He probably saw that I was unconvinced, because then he scowled, and there was something surprisingly ordinary in the look. He tilted his head to the side and looked at me through the long strands of hair that fell across his face. “You’re right. The truth is that every several years I require flesh and blood sacrifice. I’ll be drinking your blood every month, and in ten years I’m going to eat you,” he said, casually. He blinked at me then, watching for my reaction.

I blinked back, frozen. Then I really looked at him. There was no malice behind the careful blankness at the front of his eyes. Instead, I saw something like the consciousness of the lie he’d given earlier, but it wasn’t quite the same. This was something brighter, lighter. I choked. “That was a _joke_ ,” I said in disbelief. A terrifying joke, but still, evidence of an astonishing layer of his character.

His mouth curved slightly at the corners, pleased, and I felt as if I’d also passed some kind of test. “I look forward to having your company for the next ten years,” he said, and his words sounded genuine, in his own distant way.

That sounded like notice to leave, but I didn’t feel ready to go yet. “Why did you pick me?” I asked.

He exhaled, looking truly unsure for the first time. “You saw me,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see what else you can see.” That seemed to be the end of the discussion. I stepped away, and the door swung shut of its own accord.

I headed back down the curved corridor, feeling lost. What he meant by “seeing” him was lost on me. And I still had no idea what my real purpose was here.


End file.
